So, now that a decision on consoles has been made: Roadmap?
- Thread starter Leadfoot
- Start date
Its not proven but a fact DBOBE is Brabus and looks like this at Waitrose
Anybody can go to Cambridge and take pictures if that happen ? Thanks !
All hail Lord Brebus, God Emperor of Mankind !
Thats the stuff he likes. Its not easy having to sit on his throne and guide FD using his Astronomican while people berate him about bugs.
Have you ever tried sitting in anything, much less a throne, in THAT armor?????
Unworthy of His greatness all ! It's not bugs, it's features !
Maybe there is a pillow inside ? Or perhaps it's just the diaper (no way you remove it each time you go to the toilet).
It's just educated guesses I'm not an expert in oversized power armor.
Of course, the counter-factual is "what if they hadn't"? Based on what they've actually been able to develop and on what timescale...
It's March 2021. A delay to Odyssey's release has already been announced once, and now a full and accurate assessment of the current build suggests that it's still at least a year away from being release-ready on PC, and further on consoles. The forums are getting increasingly restless about "maintenance mode", and whether Odyssey will ever be released, but Frontier make the "right" decision and announce the substantial delay, first to the markets and then a few minutes later to the forums. Frontier's share price takes a severe knock, as 2020-2021 ends up barely turning a profit.
It's March 2022. Despite substantial improvements over the previous year, the PC release build is still underperforming on the target hardware. The console build is still nowhere near ready. JWE2 has had a disappointing release cycle, the share price is falling, and the Elite Dangerous forums, almost two years from the last non-bugfix release of Fleet Carriers, are drawing increasingly common comparisons to Star Citizen. Odyssey has now been in development for the best part of four years with no income at all. A whole-year financial loss looks increasingly likely. Still, it's not ready yet, and remembering the lesson of FFE, they grit their teeth and announce another delay.
Let's be optimistic about how well things go after that. It's October 2022. Enough improvements have been made that the PC Alpha of Odyssey can finally be released - though at a somewhat higher recommended spec than originally intended back in mid-2020 - but the console version is still perhaps a year away. Nevertheless, the company has spent getting on for five years developing it and needs to make some money back. After those five years - and over two years since Fleet Carriers - it's greeted with a massive cry of "is this it?", "where are the ship interiors?", "I hate this new interface" and "who wanted space legs anyway?". Most of the dedicated fans buy it anyway, of course, but PC sales are still disappointing, and the lack of console parity stops them doing much with it in terms of game events. The forums continue speculating that it'll be the last expansion and wondering how many years away the console release might be.
It's of course true that releasing it when they did was a bad move. But equally, hanging on "until it was ready" might have ended up even worse. The time to avoid being in that position was probably back in early 2018 (or maybe even late 2017) when they were deciding in outline what Odyssey might contain.
It is worth noting, however, that's it's much easier to work on, and fix, an un-published build than on a live server. Especially when you have 2versions on 3 different platforms. It's impossible to tell how long it would have taken them to be in current state of EDO, but certainly less time.
You do raise the issue, however, that Fdev is struggling to actually fix the DLC, released or not, and delaying can't solve that. It was already delayed, meaning what we had released is actually a "fixed" version already. Scary.
Also that Fdev credit rating and shares price were both built on a bubble that was doomed to plop at some point. They pushed EDO out of the door to save them in 2021, but eventually they just delayed the inevitable. In fact, it may have made it worse.
The console news is an admission of defeat. They can't make EDO works properly on consoles (at least old gen), and any computer with similar capabilities or lower. Which also means no delay would have likely changed that.
Another thing, it's quite an issue for game studios to raise above poor launch and bad rating. NMS did it, but they did an incredible amount of work, with plenty of free content and free DLC. They are in another category compared to EDO.
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Hello Games were always really good at their patch notes and information for each update, Frontier 'could' learn a lot from them in this respect:
Patch notes
This page documents the patch and update releases of No Man's Sky. There have been 35 named updates after the game's initial release. Each major release has been specifically named: Update 1.03 was announced the day before No Man's Sky was actually released, and so has a "release" date prior to...
nomanssky.fandom.com
Imagine!
True - though conversely, a lot of the non-performance fixes since Odyssey's release are ones which they had to release it to understand the need for, because they weren't bugs as much as misdesigns. So we could have waited another 6-12 months for Odyssey's release and still had it come out with all the interface issues, the overdone engineer unlocks, the easy CZ dumbfire exploits, etc. etc. that got fixed over the next six months (and of course still no ship interiors, base building, ELW landings, whatever else people were hoping for)
Possibly in hindsight the best option for them would have been:
- release Odyssey in May 2021 but explicitly as a pre-release "Gamma" build
- sell access to Gamma at the release price, and continue to include some pre-order bonuses
- expect, at the time, that this phase ends in August 2021 with the console release ... but hey, it drags on to March 2022 anyway
(and it still doesn't solve the console issue but that was probably always going to end up where it has whatever route they took)
Well, it's pure fantasy at this point, but I think they should have handled the whole thing differently. Especially considering the scope of the DLC.
First, release the concourse as "free update". Allow people to walk around and meet, perhaps add the apex shuttle to, shipyard, and so on. Good press, good to test optimization and stuff like that. The technical part. Plus if it's badly optimized, it's not a big deal, it's free and have no real bearing on the rest of the game.
Then release the DLC, when you feel confident. Concourse is still free, it's not like it bring much gameplay to the game.
It would also have alleviated the whole "years without anything". Granted, it wouldn't have been much, and people would have complained on how limited it was, but I feel it would have been better.
I redownloaded Odd a few nights ago, and with the added help of a disconnect from both the white knight community and frontiers community management, was able to climb a few rungs up the positivity ladder of Odyssey itself.
Sadly the frame rate is bad, but this time instead of woe, i marked it to the fact that people with much greater systems than mine are also getting the same framerate.
The antialiasing set to SMAA doesn't work very well.
Without ship interiors, the game is hollow and pointless. I think what they missed was elite only gets away with frontiers extreme minimum viable product development budget because it provides us with the tools to pretend. All they provided was a prototype of gameplay features, without the connection to pretend. While you're out there delivering boxes, theres no connection to space or us, the closest available think that links elite dangerous and our brains is the mission rewards / gear upgrades. That's not enough im not a rat in a wheel.
I'm starting to accept everything else though so that's something.
The stations being 2012 era static really isn't good enough either. Im not sure what percentage of value frontier consider they're offering by these, but without some life or intent they're just shells.
Yes, please pass it on they won't play the game without ship interiors. Thank you. Don't be scared to compete with any game past or future. Elite already is last gen graphics now. Just make something decent like Subnautica.. it would be a perfect fit for elite as it is, there aren't any other options really.
Sadly the frame rate is bad, but this time instead of woe, i marked it to the fact that people with much greater systems than mine are also getting the same framerate.
The antialiasing set to SMAA doesn't work very well.
Without ship interiors, the game is hollow and pointless. I think what they missed was elite only gets away with frontiers extreme minimum viable product development budget because it provides us with the tools to pretend. All they provided was a prototype of gameplay features, without the connection to pretend. While you're out there delivering boxes, theres no connection to space or us, the closest available think that links elite dangerous and our brains is the mission rewards / gear upgrades. That's not enough im not a rat in a wheel.
I'm starting to accept everything else though so that's something.
The stations being 2012 era static really isn't good enough either. Im not sure what percentage of value frontier consider they're offering by these, but without some life or intent they're just shells.
Yes, please pass it on they won't play the game without ship interiors. Thank you. Don't be scared to compete with any game past or future. Elite already is last gen graphics now. Just make something decent like Subnautica.. it would be a perfect fit for elite as it is, there aren't any other options really.
I don't see the passion from Frontier for this game. I think if there were a lot of passion, then longstanding stale or broken gameplay loops would have long ago been addressed. I think VR would have been a priority if only for the VR reputation of the game, putting aside the massive growth and even greater projected growth in the VR industry. I think a great deal more effort would have gone into injecting much needed character into the various interactions in the game. I think expanded gameplay in space would have been chosen over a somewhat shoehorned in sub-par FPS module with no VR support. What would have been chosen are things like ship interiors and associated gameplay, revamping the bounty hunting and piracy systems, and making exploration more exciting by having a lot more to discover or fear out in the black.
I'll continue to enjoy what there is to enjoy in this game of great potential not nearly met, before I move on to a different mainstay.
I'll continue to enjoy what there is to enjoy in this game of great potential not nearly met, before I move on to a different mainstay.
I don't think so. In May 2021, Odyssey was hilariously un-ready for release. They could have mitigated this by instead of plouging on and doing a retail release, they could have made it an "open beta" or "early access", and thus avoided scarring their reputation. They would have released something and still booked revenue from the hardy souls who are willing to play an early access game, but would have labelled it honestly and avoided the issue with reviews which I'm sure are deterring people from buying on Steam even now. The early and deserved poor reviews will be staining Odyssey's review score for years, and the botched release IMHO still poses an existential threat to the ongoing development of the game.
It also must have been soul destroying for the development team.
I'm still baffled why they released as they did, in the state it was - the only reasonable explanation is that the workforce is afraid of telling management anything except what management wants to hear - and I really hope that is not true.
I know the true validity of them isn't agreed upon here, but the ex-staff reviews of FDev on Glassdoor absolutely seem to indicate that this is in fact what happens.